Fatebinding

Fatebinding is the rare magical ability to directly and powerfully sense, understand, and manipulate fate. The practice has many names: Sylanthal and Ristarians call it the Art, Agnarin call it Weaving, and adherents to Oolbatism refer to it as the Sight.

It is believed across Khadaka that there is no such thing as coincidence or true randomness, but that all events are connected in a vast network of choices and reactions that shape reality. In most traditions outside Oolbatism and Naldism, it is believed that mankind was created to monitor and temper this network. It is alternately called destiny, the Great Web (especially in Phaelism), the Tapestry (especially in Agnara), or the True World (Oolbatism).

The exact scope of what fate actually does is a matter of some debate. Fatebinders themselves are usually hesitant to talk at length about what they actually do and see, so most discussion on the matter has been made by philosophers and religious leaders. Ristara described fate as the destiny of every thinking being, with no apparent concern for whether or not the natural world was subject to it. In The Wisdom of Prince Jalar the Seer, "the Tapestry is the total of all creation, the very art of the Agnar in which mankind has been invited to participate," while in A Treatise on the Nature of Fate and Man as the Agent Thereof, Weavers are described as being personally responsible for keeping all aspects of creation in check in cooperation with the Agnar. The Sylanthal teach that manipulation of fate makes even the gods subject to man.

It is generally considered that Fatebinding was first discovered by a man named Herot in the earliest ages of the world. Nearly every culture as some variant of this story in their history, so modern historians consider the name accurate, while there is significant debate about how much we can really know about any further details.

It is incredibly difficult to determine how often Fatebinders arise, as very few seem to be particularly interested in speaking about it. Historically, there have been less than 50 people who claimed to be Fatebinders and showed enough evidence for modern historians to accept their claim. But there are thousands of others who have been considered, usually posthumously, to have potentially been Fatebinders, especially prominent religious leaders like Emperor Nilarchus I and Ristara. Ristarianism and Sylanthal both claim that all humans are capable of Fatebinding and treat it as a common skill assumed to be held by most adherents to those systems, though there has been little concrete study into the accuracy of this view. In Religions of Frindar, the idea is put forth that every Oolbat is a Fatebinder, which has popularized the notion that their concept of the True World and the Sight needed to know and interact with it is actually Fatebinding as seen through a radically different lens.

Either way, Fatebinding is a popular story device, appearing in legends and stories from around the world and in all time periods. A study published through the University of Jektan in 2315 Reformed stated that if only half of known legends that claimed to be at least partially true did accurately represent the magic of their time and place, we should expect to see at least 2 Fatebinders every generation.